Is­abella braced for elite suc­cess

FROM watch­ing her brother play to be­com­ing a ju­nior Matil­das player, Is­abella Wall­head is no or­di­nary teenager.

The Se­ton Catholic Col­lege stu­dent at­tended the U17 Na­tional Team Ju­nior Matil­das Camp at the Aus­tralian In­sti­tute of Sport in Can­berra and as a re­sult was se­lected by Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Aus­tralia to travel to the Kyr­gyz Repub­lic to com­pete in the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion U16 Women’s Cham­pi­onship Qual­i­fiers.

Dur­ing her trip, she com­peted in four games against Pales­tine, In­done­sia, hosts Kyr­gyz Repub­lic and Chi­nese Taipei.

Aus­tralia qual­i­fied first in their group.

Wall­head said it had been a great ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter rep­re­sent­ing WA in the FFA Girls NTC Na­tional Youth Cham­pi­onships in Coffs Har­bour for the last three years and at­tend­ing this year’s FFA Girls NTC Chal­lenge in Can­berra.

“This year I was in­volved in three camps; the first two camps were in­tense train­ing ses­sion ev­ery day and re­cov­ery, just a test of what you are ca­pa­ble of,” she said.

“The third and last camp was a week and if you were picked, then you trained to go to Kyr­gyz Repub­lic.”

Wall­head said she had en­joyed the chance to rep­re­sent her coun­try.

“I made friend­ships from all around Aus­tralia,” she said. “The best part was be­ing able to rep­re­sent Aus­tralia and scor­ing two goals in my de­but.

“The tough­est part was be­ing home­sick; the first cou­ple of days at the camps you do get home­sick but when I went away my par­ents came over, which helped.”

The cen­tre back is train­ing with Perth Glory and said she was ramp­ing up for an­other qual­i­fier in Fe­bru­ary.

“If I get in­vited to an­other camp, I might be go­ing away again,” she said.

“In five years I hope to be play­ing for the Matil­das or Perth Glory.” THEY might be young, but mem­bers of the South Lake Dol­phins Swim­ming Club are al­ready mak­ing waves.

The Cock­burn ARCbased club has had one of its most suc­cess­ful sea­sons on record, capped off with strong show­ings at three re­cent Swim­ming WA short-course com­pe­ti­tions where they came away with six gold, six sil­ver and five bronze medals, break­ing 35 club records in the process.

At the State Short Course Cham­pi­onship, 20-year-old Kevin Kalem­ber took out gold in the open men 50m and 100m back­stroke, sil­ver in the open 50m but­ter­fly and bronze in open 100m in­di­vid­ual med­ley, as well as break­ing 10 club records.

Han­nah Palelei (18) and Kate Walling­ton (12) per­formed well at the State Age Short Course Cham­pi­onship, Palelei with sil­ver in 17-18 years 200m med­ley, while Kate won bronze in 12-13 years 200m breast­stroke.

At the State Ju­nior Short Course Cham­pi­onship, Owen He­witt (11) won bronze in 11 years 800m freestyle, while Kate Walling­ton had gold in 12 years 50m breast­stroke and sil­ver in 100m and 200m breast­stroke.

In a fam­ily af­fair, 12year-old Adrian Frederic won gold in 12 years 50m and 100m breast­stroke and sil­ver in 50m but­ter­fly, Annabelle (10) won gold in 10 years 50m breast­stroke and bronze in 100m breast­stroke and 50m but­ter­fly, while Aldrich (8) won sil­ver in eight years 50m but­ter­fly.